(Los Angeles) A state of emergency was declared Monday in California and hundreds of thousands of people found themselves without electricity due to a violent storm, which flooded several areas in the south of this American state.
“This is a major storm, with dangerous consequences that can potentially threaten lives,” said California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, proclaiming a state of emergency in eight of California’s 58 counties.
Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Barbara are particularly affected.
PHOTO AUDE GUERRUCCI, REUTERS
People walk in downtown Los Angeles during heavy rain on February 4.
Nearly 700,000 homes were without electricity Monday morning, according to the specialist site PowerOutage.us.
Dozens of flights departing and arriving at the Los Angeles airport were canceled or delayed, according to the tracking site flightaware.com.
A first violent depression hit California on Wednesday and Thursday, triggering flood alerts. Important roads had been submerged.
The American weather services (NWS) then indicated that they were especially concerned about a second winter depression in sight.
“The biggest storm of the season” could begin on Sunday, the NWS warned.
The American meteorological services had indicated that a “powerful wave of thunderstorms from the Pacific” would hit California, with “dangerous rain” likely to lead to “floods”, “intense snow showers, strong winds, coastal flooding and high waves.
The NWS also mentioned dangerous “lightning”, “urban flooding”, “rivers” bursting their banks, as well as “landslides”.
This storm with gusts of 100 km/h or more is part of a meteorological phenomenon called “Pineapple express” which originates in Hawaii, near a tropical humidity zone.
The west coast of the United States endured an unusually wet winter last year, due to a series of closely spaced storms that brought near-record rainfall.
These disasters caused more than twenty deaths and caused numerous damages and power outages.
However, this precipitation allowed California to replenish its water reserves after several years of intense drought.
Historically, California is used to alternating between hot spells and intense rains, and it is always complicated to link a particular weather event to climate change.
However, scientists have been warning for years that global warming is disrupting the climate and increasing the frequency of extreme events, whether storms or heatwaves.